Schematic plan · World War II (Italy 1944)

Battle of Velletri

26 May 1944
Italy
Victory for Germany

A schematic plan, generated from the statistics of the CAA Database of Battles: the armies' size and width, the hours of fighting, the plan of attack and the outcome are as recorded; the ground and the positions are not.

USA (US 1st Armd Div, 20,683 men under Mg Harmon) attacked Germany (Ger 362nd Inf Div & 3rd Pz Gr Div(1/8)(+), 12,327 men under Lg Greiner) in Italy. The CAA Database of Battles records 6.5 hours of fighting on a front of 14 km, a frontal attack against fortified defense, and that Germany held. Losses: USA 767 (4%), Germany 1,319 (11%).

This plan is generated from those figures. It shows the shape of the battle the database describes: the size and width of the armies, the plan of attack and the outcome. It does not show where the units actually stood.

The armies

USA

Mg Harmon

Unit	Arm	Men
USA left wing	Infantry	4,078
USA centre	Infantry	5,438
USA right wing	Infantry	4,078
USA reserve	Infantry	3,399
USA artillery (92 guns)	Artillery	1,380
USA armour (462 tanks)	Armour	2,310
Mg Harmon	Commander	—
In this plan		20,683

Germany

Lg Greiner

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	2,650
Germany centre	Infantry	3,533
Germany right wing	Infantry	2,650
Germany reserve	Infantry	2,208
Germany artillery (64 guns)	Artillery	960
Germany armour (65 tanks)	Armour	325
Lg Greiner	Commander	—
In this plan		12,326

What the sources report

	USA	Germany
Strength, this plan	20,683	12,327
Losses, this plan	767	1,319

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 447, “Velletri”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 6.5 hours
Winner: the defender
Terrain: Rolling, Mixed
Weather: Dry, Sunny, Temperate, Spring, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Fortified defense
Front width: 14 km (attacker), 14 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
USAattacker	20,683	767	0	92	Frontal attack; Penetration; Repulse; Stalemate
Germanydefender	12,327	1,319	0	64	Defensive plan

Attacker’s advantages momentum +1 · initiative +1 · air superiority +1

CDB90 (US Army Concepts Analysis Agency, 1990), tidy edition by Jeffrey B. Arnold; data under ODC-BY 1.0.

Notes

On this reconstruction

Generated automatically from the statistics in CDB90. Frontages, depths, distances, the order of events and the terrain are schematic: they follow the recorded strengths, front widths, hours of fighting, tactical plan and outcome, not maps or accounts of the battle. The sources give no hours; the timing is conjectural.

Sources

US Army Concepts Analysis Agency; tidy edition by Jeffrey B. Arnold, CAA Database of Battles (CDB90), no. 447 · ODC-BY-1.0Strengths, losses, front widths, hours of fighting, tactics and outcome.

Facts gathered from Wikidata (CC0), Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0) and Wikimedia Commons (licence per file); the plan and its text are timeastra’s own.